Six Red World Snooker Championship cancelled amid Mark Allen blast: 'Silly things like that are frustrating'
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ByEurosport
Updated 31/08/2022 at 07:10 GMT
The Six Red World Championship in Thailand has been cancelled with tournament organisers set to work on an alternative date for the event. It was due to be held in Bangkok between 5-10 September, but will not go ahead. The news comes amid fiery comments from Mark Allen, who has slammed the delay in going public with the announcement. Stream top snooker action live and on-demand on discovery+.
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The Six Red World Snooker Championship has been officially removed from the calendar on Tuesday with Northern Ireland Open champion Mark Allen claiming he knew it had been cancelled last week.
Stephen Maguire won the last staging of the invitational event in 2019 with an 8-6 win against fellow Scot John Higgins, but will have to wait for an alternative time to defend his title with the scheduled dates of 5-10 September abandoned by local organisers.
"The Six Red World Championship, which was due to take place in Thailand from September 5 to 10, has been postponed," said World Snooker Tour in a statement on Tuesday.
"Our partners in Thailand have advised us of the postponement and we are now working with them on finding new dates.
"Unfortunately this postponement is due to circumstances beyond our control."
Former Masters holder Allen has berated the delay in announcing the news after it became common knowledge that the event would not be taking place via email.
"I saw an email from the organiser to a player saying the event was off," said Allen in an interview with the Metro.
"I contacted someone on the Players’ Board asking why we haven’t been told. He said we’d hear something. The players got an email not even saying it was off, just not to book anything because they were still working on it.
"But I’ve seen it in black and white from the promoter that the event was off, he’d refunded the flight money. Silly things like that are frustrating."
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With China still unable to host any events due to the pandemic since 2019, the start of the new 2022/23 snooker season has been left with a sparse look.
The Championship League and European Masters were staged in June, July and August, but the next ranking event does not begin until 26 September when Milton Keynes hosts the British Open.
The inaugural invitational World Mixed Doubles event on 24-25 September involves only eight players with the Hong Kong Masters contested by only eight players in October (6-9) in a Covid bubble.
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"Adding events in Hong Kong and the Mixed Doubles that make the calendar look busy, but there’s only eight players in those events," said Allen, who has opted to play pool due to the absence of any events on the professional snooker circuit.
"They’re putting events on, but they’re not keeping the tour happy. There’s a lot of rumblings behind the scenes and people are not happy.
"It just seems that they’re papering over cracks. Even in the Home Nations, not 128 at the venue, streaming qualifiers, it’s not beneficial to players, just World Snooker."
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